Anti-tax crusaders seek to shelve county library system

August 25, 2002|By Timothy Egan, New York Times News Service.

KETTLE FALLS, Wash. — One library doubles as a laundry room, where a person can clean a month of dirty clothes and pick up a Winston Churchill biography in a single stop. Another shares a roof with a state liquor store--"books 'n' booze," people call it in jest.

The libraries of Stevens County, which is bounded by the Canadian border, national forests and two large Indian reservations, are among the most remote in the United States. They are also threatened with extinction.

A group of anti-tax crusaders is trying to dissolve the libraries. The American Library Association says it may be the first attempt to shutter an entire county library system by referendum. Over the last decade, parts of the rural West have had tax revolts against schools, public transportation and new parks. Now comes what may be the first tax revolt against books.

Leaders of the campaign to eliminate the Stevens County Rural Library District said they are tired of paying property taxes for something that helps people largely in the most out-of-the-way crannies of the county. Besides, they said, rural libraries are increasingly obsolete because of the Internet, video outlets and discount bookstores.

Supporters of the initiative said they have gathered 2,800 signatures in a county of about 20,000 registered voters, far more than the 10 percent required to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

`Something we don't need'

"With all the property I own, I'm probably paying up to $500 in taxes for the library, and that's just $500 wasted on something we don't need," said Dave Sitler, a real estate agent who supports the measure.

Sitler, a member of the American Heritage Party, which calls for an end to all property taxes and for a government based on biblical tenets, also complained that the head librarian's annual salary of $51,000 is too high.

"The salaries they pay those librarians, with health benefits and all that, it adds up," he said.

The Stevens County library system operates on a budget of about $1 million a year, with a full-time staff of 10. It makes do in metal-roofed sheds, converted cabins and abandoned buildings. County records show the average household pays about $38 a year in property taxes to keep the nine book outlets running.

But without the library system, some county residents said, they would have almost no link to the rest of the world.

"I home-school my kids, and our four library cards are maxed out at 40 books at all times," said Linda Arrell, who lives with her family north of Kettle Falls. "They say everybody is on the Internet, so we don't need a library. Well, some of us don't have credit cards and some of us don't have power."

County officials say they have yet to validate all the signatures on the ballot initiative. But its passage would amount to a small reversal of a philanthropic tradition that dates from Andrew Carnegie's campaign to seed rural America with libraries. Also, the measure would force the libraries to return more than $40,000 in free computers and software received from the Gates Foundation.

The library system's patrons, who said they will fight the measure down to the last Dewey decimal, said that only about 150 taxpayers, mainly big corporations, pay more than $300 a year in taxes to fund the libraries. They also said the libraries are increasingly popular.

The county system said it adds about 220 new patrons every month and is on pace to circulate nearly 300,000 books this year, double the number circulated two years ago.

Stevens County, in the state's northeast corner, is separated from the Puget Sound area by both geography and outlook. For example, Seattle residents have voted to raise taxes to pay for a new $159 million central library.

By contrast, people in Stevens County often vote down local school levies. The county's median household income, $33,387 a year, is about 25 percent below the state figure.

The county's population grew by 29 percent in the last decade, but many of the newcomers are retirees who generally oppose taxes. There also have been small but persistent groups of people who are strongly anti-government.

Differing viewpoints

In the village of Hunters, home to fewer than 200 residents, the library operates two days a week out of the building belonging to the Grange, a national association of farmers.

"The library is so important in this town, especially in the winter, when there's not a lot to do," said Dianne Eppler, who runs an antiques store in Hunters.

"When you start losing those things like a library, you lose the things that make a community. I mean, everybody needs a library," she added.

But to others, the Jeffersonian idea that every farm town at the edge of the woods should have a library to go with its school and public square is outdated.